The Cathars will be quite a unique faction to play as. While the Cathars resisted to the end, the Crusade largely wiped them out, although a few small Cathar communities remained until into the 14th Century. When diplomacy failed and a Papal envoy was murdered on the orders of a Cathar noble, the good-will ended, and the Albigensian Crusade began. Such growth and consolidation concerned the Papacy, who initially tried an ecumenical approach to bring them back to the flock. Eventually, Catharism became quite established in the region, establishing several bishoprics and holding its own ecumenical councils. Priests were replaced by 'Perfecti', preachers who travelled in pairs just as the original apostles had done in Jesus' time. The Cathar movement gained its strongest foothold amongst the peasantry of Southern France, where its anti-clerical message resonated with the poorer sort, who were disillusioned by the excesses of the Catholic Church. Humans were seen as angelic spirits trapped and tormented by their fleshly bodies somewhat like the Buddhists of the Far East, they believed that souls must transcend their corrupt bodies to end the cycle of physical rebirth and suffering. As such, the creator God of the Old Testament was regarded as the devil, while the New Testament was seen as being the true revelation of God. They preached that all material things were evil, and that only the spirit was pure.

They practiced a Gnostic form of Christianity, hardly recognisable to the faith of their more orthodox counterparts.

Having originated amongst the Paulicians of Armenia and the Bogomils of Bulgaria and the Balkans, the movement came to be known as Catharism in Western Europe. The Cathars were a heretical Christian movement that spread throughout Europe in the early medieval period.

Download the faith of a heretic